Lucille Butterworth disappearance: Four people of interest in 46yo case, Tasmanian coroner says

Several people identified as being of interest in one of Tasmania's most baffling and long-running missing person cases, the 1969 disappearance of Lucille Butterworth, will be issued with summonses, a coroner has told an inquest.

Ms Butterworth disappeared from a bus stop in the Hobart suburb of Claremont on August 25 that year.

Today, coroner Simon Cooper told the formal start of her inquest that he believed the 20-year-old had been a victim of homicide.

He said after reading the vast quantity of police evidence, he believed there were four main people of interest.

One of them died in 2012, while the other three are believed to be alive.

The coroner said summonses and, if necessary, warrants would be issued for those people and others believed to have information about her disappearance, to give evidence to the inquest.

It's a terrible thing to have to life with. It never goes away - day after day, year after year. It still huts after all these years.

John Fitzgerald, Lucille Butterworth's former boyfriend

On the day she disappeared, Ms Butterworth, 20, and was on her way to a Miss Tasmania Quest fundraising meeting in the town of New Norfolk, a 30-minute drive west of Hobart.

A work colleague had dropped her at the bus stop. No-one has seen or heard from her since.

Her boyfriend John Fitzgerald lived in New Norfolk and was waiting for Ms Butterworth to arrive on the bus.

The couple had planned their engagement, had their rings made and we preparing to make the announcement.

The Butterworths first learned their daughter was missing when Mr Fitzgerald phoned to speak with her the next morning.

The case so far

20-year-old Claremont typist Lucille Butterworth was last seen at a bus stop on her way to a Miss Tasmania Quest event in 1969

The disappearance was initially treated as a missing person case; police began a murder investigation, and failed to find her body

In 1986, a man claimed he had helped bury Ms Butterworth's body, but police were unable to locate any remains at the locations

In 2014, Hobart detectives questioned a man for four hours in the state's north west, but he was released without charge

Soon after, Ms Butterworth's family appealed for a reward for information to help solve her disappearance and murder

The police initially operated on the belief that Ms Butterworth had run away.

Outside the court today both Lucille's brother Jim and Mr Fitzgerald said it was a ludicrous notion.

"If she was five minutes late getting home she would ring my mother and say, 'I'm going to be late'," Jim Butterworth said.

"It was ridiculous to think that they even thought she was a runaway - she had no reason to run away," said Mr Fitzgerald.

Her parents died without ever knowing what happened to her and her brothers Jim and John and Mr Fitzgerald remain desperate for answers.

"She was only going to New Norfolk, simple as that," Mr Butterworth said.

Family hopes inquest will bring closure

Mr Butterworth said he was pleased the inquest would begin, however late it eventuated.

"It's satisfying after all these years that something's being done," he said.

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